This invention relates to semiconductor material processing, and in particular to a method and arrangement for producing crystalline semiconductor materials in strip or sheet forms.
One of the major problems in the preparation of semiconductor devices is that the basic crystalline material is obtained by a batch process wherein individual single crystal rods are sliced into discs for subsequent processing. The present crystal pulling and slicing techniques are relatively time consuming. Hence, devices requiring a relatively large semiconductor user are prohibitively costly. Furthermore, present techniques are limited to the production of semiconductor discs about 10 cm in diameter thus limiting the size and/or the number of devices that can be formed in a single process.